Dive Review of
Scuba Emporium in
The Continental USA/Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Greater Caribbean, Mexico, Australia, NC

Dive Conditions

[Unspecified]  

[None]  

Overall Rating

We booked with Scuba Emporium for 5 dives weeks before the trip, and also
confirmed the dive time of 10am a few days before the dive, since it
differed from their brochure.
But when we arrived at the pier - no boat.  It left at 8am.  The dive shop
is not located at the pier so we called the dive shop.   Sorry, we were
misinformed about the time.  Great, now what to do, since the afternoon
dive was already full.
Finally, they called back and said they could squeeze us on with a large
group (23 people) on the 1pm boat. We decided that was OK, at this point we
just wanted to get wet.  
We arrived shortly before 1pm and waited.  The large group was a class of
students that had just certified that morning.  The dive operation had many
mis-communications – the wetsuits hadn’t arrived for the new divers, and
there wasn’t enough weights or weight belts on board. Straightening this up
took more than one trip back to the shop. We finally left the dock at 2:30!
 We were looking for a specific wreck dive spot, since our group  were all
experience divers were allowed to suit up and be the first in the water. 
The DM just needed to jump in and connect the boat to the mooring.  He dove
several times – we waited geared up, hot in our wetsuits, for 30 minutes. 
He still couldn’t find the mooring.  Finally, we asked him to bag this site
and find us another.  We just wanted to dive, and all these new divers were
getting motion sickness from the boat just floating about in the water.  We
moved to another site nearby, where the DM immediately found the mooring. 
It was now 4pm.  
The five of us jumped in and toured the dive site.  I never even got the
name for this small boat wreck.  The vis was bad, and there were not a
great variety of fish. We did a 40 minute dive down to 75 feet, and then
were working our way up to the safety stop when we realized that the other
divers were still just entering the water.  Which meant that we had to wait
for the other divers, and  it was 6pm before we left the dive site.  There
was supposed to be a second dive, but everyone agreed to cancel and just
get back to shore – where we arrived at 7pm.
Our simple 2 tank dive that should have taken less than 4 hours turned out
to be 6 hours and only one dive.
The captain gave no apologies.  The DM did everything he could, but he was
helpless for the mismanagement of the trip.   
The dive shop did give us a discount in the end, charging us only $25 per
person, but I still think that was too much for the hassles we
experienced.
 

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